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When CBC Television found itself outbid for the last two Olympic Games, many saw it as the beginning of the end for the perennially cash-strapped public broadcaster, which had proudly billed itself as “Canada’s Olympic Network.”

There hasn’t been a lot of good news lately from a corporation still coping with a $115-million slash under the 2012 federal budget and the departure last spring of Kirsten Stewart, the head of English services, to Twitter Canada. She will be replaced by Heather Conway, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s chief business officer.

The return of the Olympics to CBC, however, is one bright spot that seems to have re-energized the broadcaster. On Wednesday, CBC announced it will broadcast more than 1,500 hours in English and French from the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games — more than double what it produced in prior games.

“When Canadians think of the Olympics, they think of the CBC, and we’re not going to disappoint them,” promises Jennifer Dettman, the CBC’s head of sports and factual entertainment in an interview. “We will bring those stories home and make sure that viewers don’t miss a moment.”

With Brian Williams gone to CTV just before the Vancouver Games, Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean will be the face of the upcoming games.

“We’ll be going full tilt. When it’s prime time in Canada, it will be 3 a.m. in Sochi. There won’t be a mouse moving, but you can bet it will be an incredible event,” MacLean said in an interview. “And can you imagine what a Canada versus Russia hockey game is going to be like?”

Though the Olympics are taking up most of this season’s schedule and budget, the CBC did manage to eke out three new prime-time programs.

“Necessity is the mother of invention. We had the cut, and we’ve had time to react to it and I feel like we are in a good place right now,” said Dettman. “It made us take stock of the kind of content that we should be doing, and what is our place as a broadcaster in Canada.”

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